Song Composition at its Best

Music is, for some people, the most important thing ever invented. In time, this has become not only a usual thing in every person's life, but also a huge money making industry, with a lot of shining starts and lots of music genres. Of course, some music genres were lost in time, but there are some that have stood the test of time and remained in people's hearts.

I am talking about non-commercial music, like hard rock, folk and jazz. If the first one is almost on the verge of becoming a commercial genre, we cannot say the same thing about jazz. Jazz is and always will be a music genre loved by many people, because of its nice rhythm and the large array of public that it is addressed to.

Impro-Visor (short for “Improvisation Advisor”) is a music notation program designed to help jazz musicians compose and hear solos similar to the ones that might be improvised. The objective is to improve understanding of solo construction and tune chord changes. In order to do that, Impro-Visor comes with some pretty nice tools that will allow you to compose not only jazz, but also many other kinds of music, in the easiest way possible.

The Looks

Impro-Visor features a pretty nice, straightforward interface, with a basic design and a usual functionality. This cannot amaze us since Impro-Visor is written only in the Java programming language, so it has that basic look and feel. Even so, menus are quick to reach, Impro-Visor is pretty complex and offers a large array of options, and there are also a lot of preferences available for customization.

In addition, Impro-Visor offers some utilities that detach from the main interface. These utilities are the leadsheet textual editor, the lick generator, the piano keyboard, the style editor and the voicing editor.

The main buttons that give you quick access to shortcuts are available in the main interface, just above the main working window. This gives you the advantage to work at any time you want, and when you need a feature or shortcut, they will thus be available to you, with the quick access.

The Works

Upon entering, you can choose a sample, or begin with a simple, blank sheet. This will allow you to start a new composition from scratch, enjoying the advantage of full customization and giving it a unique, personal style. After making some changes to the sheet, you can use some of the many transposition modes that Impro-Visor offers. You can transpose the melody and chords by semitone, harmonically, or by octave. The transposition can be made in an up or down fashion, as needed by the composer.

The View panel allows you customize some aspects regarding the visual appearance of Impro-Visor. This way, you will notice that the layout of the page can be auto-adjusted at any time. This comes in handy if you don't have time to bother with the layout details, and only need to focus on the quality of the song.

As I said earlier, there are some utilities that ca be accessed from the utilities panel and that can be used to ease your composition in various ways. One of the most important is the piano keyboard, which can be used to create nice tunes, in a quick way, by playing them, without having to select the notes individually.

Impro-Visor contains a built-in basic grammar as well, featuring some info about the program, but also some basic knowledge about jazz and jazz singers. The preferences panel gives you access to the main options of Impro-Visor that can be customized at your own pleasure, but also allows you to select the preference panel that interests you the most, in an individual manner. The global preferences give you access to the main, important changes that can be made, including the appearance and cache settings.

The style panel allows you choose the style that suits you best, and insert it in the tune that you want to play. Midi devices can be setup in the midi panel, and contour settings can be customized in the contour panel.

The Good

Impro-Visor offers a good and comprehensive way to compose music. Originally supporting only jazz, Impro-Visor has expanded in a fully-featured program that now supports many music styles. It is written in Java, and it is open source, thus giving you the possibility to use it any time you want, however you want, without having to pay for it. The list of features and music genres increases with every version, making Impro-Visor a good tool for composers that look for an open-source composition software.

The Bad

The interface seems to be stuffed with a lot of panels and buttons, and the novice composer may be overwhelmed by its complexity at first.

The Truth

If you are in need for a good composition software, with a lot of features and a good database, you are lucky because Impro-Visor is exactly what you need. Try it and see for yourself whether you like it or not.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: